Anti-doping chief tells Australia to come clean

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The president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Dick Pound, says Australia's reputation as an international leader in the fight against drugs in sport has been compromised by its refusal to release details of an investigation into five cyclists.

Mr Pound has called on the Australian Sports Commission to open its books on the riders accused of using performance-enhancing drugs. The five were cleared of any wrongdoing, but Mr Pound said yesterday: "I would have thought that if athletes were exonerated, it would be quite easy to say why they are exonerated.

"The rest of the world is going to say how is it that Australia deals with all these things in secret?"

Mr Pound said in a radio interview that he had been denied a copy of the independent report into the claims despite repeated requests, and he would complain to the Australian Government.

However, the commission's chief executive, Mark Peters, said the anti-doping agency had been kept up to date with all the latest developments, but the report could not be made public because Mark French, the rider at the centre of the scandal, was appealing against his ban.

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"Mr Pound should be aware that Australia, like his home country Canada, has binding privacy legislation that prevents the release of information given in confidence without the approval of the individuals who gave that information," Mr Peters said.

He said Mr Pound would have learned that his agency had been kept informed since last year, had he "checked before making ill-informed media statements".

Australian Customs has launched an inquiry into how a supplement at the centre of the scandal, Testicomp, got into the country. Traces of the supplement were found in French's room at the Australian Institute of Sport's cycling base in Adelaide.